Thanks 😀
I haven't checked yet for shorts but it looks great visually. It was very fun to build. Oddly enough, the part that was the most annoying was soldering the caps, because I don't really have an appropriate pair of pliers at hand yet, the rest went very smoothly.

I tried to contact them just today, so I don't expect them to answer that quickly, I'm just stating what's been done so far.

Oh that's even better 😁

Edit :
After checking all pins with a multimeter, I think I nailed it first try 😁 (we'll see when I get the rest of the components), I only found two pins that looked shorted on the PCIe bus, but after a quick check it turns out it's just two ground pins together (pin 27 and 29).

By the way I don't see the files to build the case in the github. Did you just forget it or are you working on a better version ?

Deksor wrote on 2022-10-29, 23:59:

By the way I don't see the files to build the case in the github. Did you just forget it or are you working on a better version ?

Yeeeah, I wasn't really sure if the case I made was good enough to be shared, but sure I can put those files up on Github if anyone wants to use them, I suppose.
I'll be making a better one eventually though.

3D printed case files are up on GitHub (wiki).

I received one of Eivind's kits last week and built it on Sunday.
The build went pretty smooth and with the great instructions on github I had Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis running within a couple hours.

Adding the MT32-pi was a bit harder than expected.
First I thought I could directly plug my Pi Zero 2 into the 40-pin connector. Took me a while until I realized that I had it upside down. My Pi Zero 2 came with the headers pre-soldered, so they were on the wrong side.
And desoldering those headers also took a while and I cracked a SD card in the process. I was almost convinced I broke the Pi during desoldering when it didn't boot. Especially these days I'm happy that it was just the SD card.
Next mistake was to install the display in the wrong way.

I did install MS-DOS 6.22 and I'm now struggling to get any USB mouse working (I don't have any PS/2 or serial mouse). Tried five different mice, different USB ports, different drivers, in combination with different keyboards and so far no luck. Any help is appreciated. I also couldn't get the mouse to work in Freedos but I spent less time trying there.

Some random thought/ideas that I had so far:
- Thinking about trying to connect the gameport pins of the sound chip to the Pi (probably via some digital potentiometer ICs over I2C) and run a modified MT32-PI to support a USB joystick
- Would be nice if the holes on the board would line up with the holes on the Pi Zero to mount a cover plate on standoffs
- I would like to mount the VGA port somewhere and maybe also add 5V on pin 9 to power a VGA to HDMI adapter
- I need to do something about the display sticking out on the side

Thanks to Eivind for the great project!

florian3 wrote on 2022-11-02, 03:43:

I received one of Eivind's kits last week and built it on Sunday. The build went pretty smooth and with the great instructions o […]
Show full quote

I received one of Eivind's kits last week and built it on Sunday.
The build went pretty smooth and with the great instructions on github I had Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis running within a couple hours.

fp-tltop1.jpgfp-tlbot1.jpg
fp-tlindy4.jpg

Adding the MT32-pi was a bit harder than expected.
First I thought I could directly plug my Pi Zero 2 into the 40-pin connector. Took me a while until I realized that I had it upside down. My Pi Zero 2 came with the headers pre-soldered, so they were on the wrong side.
And desoldering those headers also took a while and I cracked a SD card in the process. I was almost convinced I broke the Pi during desoldering when it didn't boot. Especially these days I'm happy that it was just the SD card.
Next mistake was to install the display in the wrong way.

fp-tldisplay-wrong.jpg
fp-tlmt32pi.jpg

I did install MS-DOS 6.22 and I'm now struggling to get any USB mouse working (I don't have any PS/2 or serial mouse). Tried five different mice, different USB ports, different drivers, in combination with different keyboards and so far no luck. Any help is appreciated. I also couldn't get the mouse to work in Freedos but I spent less time trying there.

Some random thought/ideas that I had so far:
- Thinking about trying to connect the gameport pins of the sound chip to the Pi (probably via some digital potentiometer ICs over I2C) and run a modified MT32-PI to support a USB joystick
- Would be nice if the holes on the board would line up with the holes on the Pi Zero to mount a cover plate on standoffs
- I would like to mount the VGA port somewhere and maybe also add 5V on pin 9 to power a VGA to HDMI adapter
- I need to do something about the display sticking out on the side

Thanks to Eivind for the great project!

Nice, to the mouse part maybe it could be that it needs to be a ps/2 compatible usb mouse. I could be wrong, lats wait for a real answer 😀

florian3 wrote on 2022-11-02, 03:43:

I received one of Eivind's kits last week and built it on Sunday.
The build went pretty smooth and with the great instructions on github I had Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis running within a couple hours.

Good to hear! 😀

I'll try to address some of your questions:

florian3 wrote on 2022-11-02, 03:43:

I did install MS-DOS 6.22 and I'm now struggling to get any USB mouse working (I don't have any PS/2 or serial mouse). Tried five different mice, different USB ports, different drivers, in combination with different keyboards and so far no luck. Any help is appreciated. I also couldn't get the mouse to work in Freedos but I spent less time trying there.

Make sure to use CuteMouse (CTMOUSE.EXE) either version 1.9 or 2.1, as those talk to the BIOS (which has a PS/2<->USB mouse emulator), instead of PS/2 directly.
I've tried a couple of modern optical mice with no issues.

florian3 wrote on 2022-11-02, 03:43:

- Thinking about trying to connect the gameport pins of the sound chip to the Pi (probably via some digital potentiometer ICs over I2C) and run a modified MT32-PI to support a USB joystick

Not sure how you'd go about modifying mt32-pi to achieve this, it's bare-metal software after all. I'm thinking I'll add a standard gameport connector (MIDI+joystick) in a subsequent board revision, but USB joystick/gamepad might be hard...

florian3 wrote on 2022-11-02, 03:43:

- Would be nice if the holes on the board would line up with the holes on the Pi Zero to mount a cover plate on standoffs

Yeah I suppose that makes sense. Noted!

florian3 wrote on 2022-11-02, 03:43:

- I would like to mount the VGA port somewhere and maybe also add 5V on pin 9 to power a VGA to HDMI adapter

When designing the board, I did contemplate adding a pin header to connect a short cable from the VGA card module to, and routing the signals on the board to a VGA connector. It seemed a bit over-engineered and space consuming, though - and I didn't quite see what value it would add. I guess adding 5V on pin 9 would be something, but I'm still a bit skeptical of the whole concept. 😀

florian3 wrote on 2022-11-02, 03:43:

- I need to do something about the display sticking out on the side

Did you solder the display onto the board directly? I would suggest using 4 Dupont wires instead, and mounting the display in a case of some sort (btw, take a look at my example case on Github.

Unfortunately I significantly underestimated how many tiny surface mounted components there would be that aren’t already mounted. I’m old, I can barely see them, never mind handle them! 🤣! I do have the option to have a company like JLCPCB build me one but that will mean buying everything again.
My fault, I should have looked for the assembly guide before I bought the kit. Learn from my mistake & make sure you know what you’re going to need to do before you buy, it’s not just the chips & sockets that need to be mounted, there’s a bunch of the smallest components too.
My best wishes Eivind, you did make purchasing easy & I know you’ve documented the build process, like a said it’s my mistake.

nliwilson wrote on 2022-11-02, 08:52:

Unfortunately I significantly underestimated how many tiny surface mounted components there would be that aren’t already mounted. I’m old, I can barely see them, never mind handle them! 🤣! I do have the option to have a company like JLCPCB build me one but that will mean buying everything again.
My fault, I should have looked for the assembly guide before I bought the kit. Learn from my mistake & make sure you know what you’re going to need to do before you buy, it’s not just the chips & sockets that need to be mounted, there’s a bunch of the smallest components too.
My best wishes Eivind, you did make purchasing easy & I know you’ve documented the build process, like a said it’s my mistake.

Yeah, those 0603 parts are pretty small. Decent eye sight, a steady hand and a soldering iron with a fine tip is a must. I often use one of those big magnifying glasses with a ring of LEDs encircling the glass, mounted on a flexible arm to make it easier. I'll contact you by email, I'm sure we can work this out somehow! 😀

Eivind wrote on 2022-11-02, 09:20:

Yeah, those 0603 parts are pretty small. Decent eye sight, a steady hand and a soldering iron with a fine tip is a must. I often use one of those big magnifying glasses with a ring of LEDs encircling the glass, mounted on a flexible arm to make it easier. I'll contact you by email, I'm sure we can work this out somehow! 😀

Honestly I've always found it easier to use a wide flat tip when soldering even tiny components, the fine tip never seems to make stuff flow right.

But always use flux - it's like magic solder-make-worky-paste

rasteri wrote on 2022-11-02, 10:59:

Eivind wrote on 2022-11-02, 09:20:

Yeah, those 0603 parts are pretty small. Decent eye sight, a steady hand and a soldering iron with a fine tip is a must. I often use one of those big magnifying glasses with a ring of LEDs encircling the glass, mounted on a flexible arm to make it easier. I'll contact you by email, I'm sure we can work this out somehow! 😀

Honestly I've always found it easier to use a wide flat tip when soldering even tiny components, the fine tip never seems to make stuff flow right.

But always use flux - it's like magic solder-make-worky-paste

Yep, coming in with the "sharp" edge of a big conical tip does the trick for me as well! Also, the big tips tend to hold their temperature better because of the higher mass, so it can help with soldering stuff on fat planes.
Flux is the magic stuff, indeed. Never too much! 😁

Eivind wrote on 2022-11-02, 07:34:

Make sure to use CuteMouse (CTMOUSE.EXE) either version 1.9 or 2.1, as those talk to the BIOS (which has a PS/2<->USB mouse emulator), instead of PS/2 directly.
I've tried a couple of modern optical mice with no issues.

Tried 1.9.1 and 2.1b4, no luck. In both cases the cutemouse driver prints that it's installed on the PS/2 port but I get nothing when moving the mouse (tried some games and mousetst that comes with cutemouse).
At least one mouse I tried says on the back that it's PS/2 compatible.
Is it possible to disable the PS/2 mouse support on the Vortex86EX so that I can be sure that the drivers don't try to use it?

Eivind wrote on 2022-11-02, 07:34:

florian3 wrote on 2022-11-02, 03:43:

- Thinking about trying to connect the gameport pins of the sound chip to the Pi (probably via some digital potentiometer ICs over I2C) and run a modified MT32-PI to support a USB joystick

Not sure how you'd go about modifying mt32-pi to achieve this, it's bare-metal software after all. I'm thinking I'll add a standard gameport connector (MIDI+joystick) in a subsequent board revision, but USB joystick/gamepad might be hard...

It looks like the Circle framework that mt32-pi is using has some support for gamepads, so the idea would be to connect a USB joystick to the Pi, somehow connect the Pi to the gameport of the sound chip and implement the software in a fork of mt32-pi. (probably I should focus on getting a mouse working first...)

Eivind wrote on 2022-11-02, 07:34:

florian3 wrote on 2022-11-02, 03:43:

- I would like to mount the VGA port somewhere and maybe also add 5V on pin 9 to power a VGA to HDMI adapter

When designing the board, I did contemplate adding a pin header to connect a short cable from the VGA card module to, and routing the signals on the board to a VGA connector. It seemed a bit over-engineered and space consuming, though - and I didn't quite see what value it would add. I guess adding 5V on pin 9 would be something, but I'm still a bit skeptical of the whole concept. 😀

It's not a big deal, I'm just a bit worried that I'll break the VGA card or connector.

Eivind wrote on 2022-11-02, 07:34:

florian3 wrote on 2022-11-02, 03:43:

- I need to do something about the display sticking out on the side

Did you solder the display onto the board directly? I would suggest using 4 Dupont wires instead, and mounting the display in a case of some sort (btw, take a look at my example case on Github.

I did solder a female dupont header to the display that attaches to the pins on the board.
Thanks for sharing the case design.

florian3 wrote on 2022-11-02, 14:22:

Eivind wrote on 2022-11-02, 07:34:

florian3 wrote on 2022-11-02, 03:43:

- I need to do something about the display sticking out on the side

Did you solder the display onto the board directly? I would suggest using 4 Dupont wires instead, and mounting the display in a case of some sort (btw, take a look at my example case on Github.

I did solder a female dupont header to the display that attaches to the pins on the board.
Thanks for sharing the case design.

Going with the solution until I have some kind of case: glued another 4 pin female connector to the one on the display board and then soldered wires to the pins.

Another thought I had even though I doubt it'd be easy to do at all :
For ethernet maybe a solution could be to connect to the raspberry pi with some spi to ethernet adapter and then use the rpi as a router to WiFi.

But the issue is that the rpi isn't running Linux so I doubt that's feasible easily

florian3 wrote on 2022-11-02, 14:22:

Tried 1.9.1 and 2.1b4, no luck. In both cases the cutemouse driver prints that it's installed on the PS/2 port but I get nothing when moving the mouse (tried some games and mousetst that comes with cutemouse).
At least one mouse I tried says on the back that it's PS/2 compatible.
Is it possible to disable the PS/2 mouse support on the Vortex86EX so that I can be sure that the drivers don't try to use it?

That's weird... I'm using 2.1b4 on FreeDOS with mice I know for a fact do _not_ support PS/2 over USB. They're standard USB HID-compliant mice.
You've used a USB keyboard in both USB ports without issues? That points to this not being a hardware fault at least. Maybe the USB mouse code in SeaBIOS doesn't detect your particular mouse or something...?
The BIOS is open source, if you want to have a crack at it! 😉

Deksor wrote on 2022-11-02, 16:45:

Another thought I had even though I doubt it'd be easy to do at all :
For ethernet maybe a solution could be to connect to the raspberry pi with some spi to ethernet adapter and then use the rpi as a router to WiFi.

But the issue is that the rpi isn't running Linux so I doubt that's feasible easily

Sounds convoluted! :p I'd consider what my end goal is - if it's wireless gaming, the most accessible solution would probably be a "wifi modem" solution, where you connect a Pi running Hayes modem emulation over serial. I've done this on other projects in the past, works great! Probably not feasible to cram this into the mt32-pi, because like you said, it's not running Linux. But another Pi Zero W (doesn't have to be a Zero 2W) would do the job.

Maybe a ESP or pi pico W solution could fit that use case, they're not out of stock like the rest and would make the thing less overkill 😀

Now having ethernet would be great to move files around, though moving files by SD card isn't as painful as doing it on a desktop PC due to the boot times and ease of access

Deksor wrote on 2022-11-02, 19:13:

Maybe a ESP or pi pico W solution could fit that use case, they're not out of stock like the rest and would make the thing less overkill 😀

Now having ethernet would be great to move files around, though moving files by SD card isn't as painful as doing it on a desktop PC due to the boot times and ease of access

Yeah, I just came across this ESP8266-based wifi modem/ethernet emulator, looks very promising... Unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's open sourced 🙁

Edit: weeeell, the firmware looks to be open source at least... will have to take a closer look at this.

Edit2: Apparently I haven't been paying attention to this at all - seems there are several esp8266 firmwares/sketches floating around, and that these "modems" people are selling are really only esp8266 dev board breakouts to an rs232 transceiver chip + DE9M plug. With this in mind I might just ditch my ethernet plans for an upcoming revision and design in room for a small castellated esp8266 module. I already have a USB connector and a secondary TTL-level uart in place, would only need an ftdi chip or something to be able to flash the esp.

Eivind wrote on 2022-11-02, 17:45:

That's weird... I'm using 2.1b4 on FreeDOS with mice I know for a fact do _not_ support PS/2 over USB. They're standard USB HID- […]
Show full quote

florian3 wrote on 2022-11-02, 14:22:

Tried 1.9.1 and 2.1b4, no luck. In both cases the cutemouse driver prints that it's installed on the PS/2 port but I get nothing when moving the mouse (tried some games and mousetst that comes with cutemouse).
At least one mouse I tried says on the back that it's PS/2 compatible.
Is it possible to disable the PS/2 mouse support on the Vortex86EX so that I can be sure that the drivers don't try to use it?

That's weird... I'm using 2.1b4 on FreeDOS with mice I know for a fact do _not_ support PS/2 over USB. They're standard USB HID-compliant mice.
You've used a USB keyboard in both USB ports without issues? That points to this not being a hardware fault at least. Maybe the USB mouse code in SeaBIOS doesn't detect your particular mouse or something...?
The BIOS is open source, if you want to have a crack at it! 😉

Compiled a bios with serial debugging. It does detect the mouse but I‘m not getting any mouse events.
I set the debug log level to 9 and now everything is extremely slow. Will take a while until I‘m back on a useable BIOS.
Disabling PS2 port in the Seabios config also seems to disable USB mouse and keyboard, so not a good idea.

Update:
Yeah the keyboard work on both USB ports.
Only when I plug in a Logitech USB wireless mouse receiver the keyboard stops working.
Keyboard also didn’t work when connected via a USB hub.

Do you have a known working popular mouse model?

Does a wired mouse have the same behaviour?